for Research in Development Economics

Project Evaluations

The Weiss Fund facilitates connections between organizations interested in project evaluations and researchers interested in conducting such evaluations.

For Organizations

If your organization is interested in an academically rigorous evaluation of a project, you may reach out to the Weiss Fund for assistance in recruiting an interested researcher.

We ask that you send us a short memo with a description of the project and what you would like from the evaluation (see guidelines below). If, on the basis of this information, the Weiss Fund believes that researchers might potentially be interested in conducting such an evaluation, we will advertise the project evaluation opportunity on our website to graduate students and faculty at the institutions eligible for Weiss Fund support. Please note that it will be up to the researchers to decide which projects they are interested in evaluating, to connect with the organizations that are interested in evaluation to see if there is a match, to work with the organizations to design a proposed evaluation, and to submit the proposal to the Weiss Fund committee for consideration in the competitive grant process. Researchers are typically interested in generating scientifically valid answers to questions that will be of general interest beyond just the organization involved.

If you would like to reach out to researchers to conduct a project evaluation with your organization, please send a short memo describing your project and evaluation interest to the Weiss Fund (wfp@fas.harvard.edu). The memo should include as much of the following information as feasible, and any other information that may relevant.

Memo Content Guidelines

1) Names and contacts of key contact people.

2) A description of the program to be evaluated, including the geographic location, the scope of the program and the organization.

3) A list of potentially answerable questions (e.g., Does the program work? Which of several alternative scripts maximizes take-up?)

4) Key outcome variables.

5) Potential sample size.

6) What the organization might be willing to do to evaluate the program.For example, is randomization feasible? If so, at what level (individual, school, clinic)?

7) Budget and staff resources that might be available.

8) Administrative data already available.

9) Copies of any existing reports or other materials that might be useful for potential applicants.

Since each researcher has his or her own set of research interests it is difficult to predict when there will be a match and when there won’t be. If your opportunity is advertised through our website, you may be contacted by interested researchers directly, although some opportunities may not generate researcher interested or receive responses. If there is a potential match with a researcher, there will typically be a period of email and phone exchanges between the organization and the research, to explore the potential for an evaluation. If things look favorable at that stage, the researcher could apply for travel funds for an exploratory trip to visit the organization and plan the proposed evaluation in more detail. If there is interest in moving forward with an evaluation at that point, the researcher would typically submit an Expression of Interest to the Weiss Fund to apply for a grant to fund the project evaluation.